I am very confused by the coloring scheme of the fruit & cream instant oatmeal I bought recently. The blue packets contain peaches, the orange packets contain blueberries, and the bananas came in a brown package. Only the strawberries came in an appropriately colored packet - red.

In the variety pack I bought they included two of each, except four of the peach, which has turned out to be my least favorite. Is it strange that I had a dream last night that my last two blue packets had magically transmogrified into blueberry packets instead?

Tags: random

I wish there were laws against toeing the line in advertising.

Musetta bought me some "carry-on" luggage for Christmas. It was an awesome idea for a gift, because I need it and also because I don't want to bother with shopping for it myself. However, the Samsonite she bought, while labelled for carry-on, is actually too large when measured. I am not sure which airlines that Samsonite considers this carry-on for; Delta sure won't let me get away with something this large.

It occurs to me that Samsonite did a dirty trick, which is saying that it fits most overhead bins, but not all; I bet in truth, that means it fits very few (maybe international flights?), but no one is going to check their language. It makes no sense why they fake it; Samsonite did not to lie on this one - there's a distinct possibility she would've bought an actual carry-on from Samsonite anyways!

Anyways, this has left me pretty frustrated because now I am upset that I'm having to deal with Samsonite's bullshit and Musetta is upset because the people at the store lied to her about the luggage being carry-on. Plus now we're both more inconvenienced by having to return this luggage and find some new one (not Samsonite).

Livejournal ads have become really obnoxious in the last month. What gives?

Bonus points if you get a huge, screen-blocking pop-up ad while viewing this entry.

The application I first started working on after switching jobs to Mobiata has been released! FlightTrack for Android is now available on any Android-powered device. Yay.

I'm pretty shocked at the development pace for mobile devices. It is light speed in comparison to my Oracle work. In the 2+ years I worked at Oracle, we didn't have a single major release due to constant delays (the running joke being "we're releasing 6-9 months the current date"). In comparison, I've been working at Mobiata for five weeks and we've already released two apps (mine, as well as TripDeck for iPhone).

I'm enjoying working at home. It affords many great benefits: I can listen to music on speakers, I can easily do those errands that can only be done during work hours, I can get packages delivered to my apartment. And yes, I work in my underwear sometimes. By far the strangest benefit is weight loss; I've lost about one pound each week I've worked at Mobiata. That may not seem like much, but I've been trying for years to drop a few pounds (back to my college-era weight), and in the span of five weeks I'm most of the way there. I'm going to need to buy a new belt because my current one looks like a wreck, it's been worn on so many notches that it is all wrinkly.

I am still at a loss to explain the weight change exactly, because I'm not eating any healthier (nor exercising any more than before). I think it has to do with a different eating schedule. When I worked at Oracle, I would wake up and eat breakfast around 8:30, and my coworkers and I would get lunch at 11:00. That meant I'd overeat for a bit in the morning, and then I'd be starving by the time I got home around 18:00, so I'd have eat extra then, too. Now I just eat little meals and snacks when I feel peckish.

Anyways, things are going pretty well at camp Daniel.

Inspired by epistasis post and my intense desire to put off work for a bit, here's my recent gamelog. Also, a picture of my smashed-up car.

( Games and Car )

I don't know how anyone can do that to a parked car either.

Well, someone fucked up the passenger side doors of my car real good tonight while it was parked outside a restaurant. I was lucky enough that this person left a note... I am going through the insurance claim processes now. Still, I was not looking forward to my first "my car looks like crap because shit happened to it" moment - I happen to like how beautiful my car is. Was. Will be.

I wasn't around when it happened and thus have no idea how someone can hit a parked car that hard. It's not like the doors have a small dent, the warp goes all the way up the side. Plus, there is a dent on each door - how did this happen? I'd put up pictures but it's too dark to take any good ones; if anyone is interested I can post some tomorrow.

I sure am bad at updating this Livejournal thing, but important stuff has come up.

I am leaving my job at Oracle. Tomorrow. I put in my two weeks... 9 business days ago. I am going to work with Ben at Mobiata making smartphone apps.

It is exciting and nervewracking at the same time. Leaving Oracle is kind of sad, because I like the people I work with a lot. Not as much the things I've been working on, though. I have learned a ton in the last two years though, I scoff at the work I did in college now as being that of a much lesser coder.

Anyways, just thought I'd put that out there.

Last night The Beatles: Rock Band came out. I crushed it with great celerity.

A friend recommended I try singing and playing guitar at the same time, for that true Beatles feel. After duct-taping a microphone to a tripod as a ghetto microphone stand, I found this to be an excellent idea and played through most of the game in this manner.

I've not had this much fun with a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game in a long time... it used to be for me that the harder the song was, the more fun it was. But it's now I just enjoy the music, and since The Beatles are one of my favorite bands, the experience was wholly enjoyable. Now, I just need to find other people to play with... (possibly Saturday night? Trying to coordinate things, but I suck at that.)

Tags: games

My general distaste with chain letters has made me avoid jumping on the Facebook healthcare bandwagon, though I suppose it would be cool now that Barack Obama himself has joined in. But I enjoy the sentiment greatly.

Only one person has responded negatively to these so far, his argument being that we should fix our old roads and bridges before healthcare, because people have died when bridges collapsed (like 35W a few years ago). This - this is what we're up against.

Musetta and I went to the Minnesota state fair today. We had a lot of fun walking around and eating horrifically dangerous food, but the most amusing things happened when we played a few carnival games.

Given that I won Musetta some stuffed animals last year, the pressure was on for me to unnecessarily one-up myself. We weren't having any luck for a while, until we passed by the "beat the guesser" game. You could either have him try to guess your weight (within 3 pounds), age (within 2 years) or birth month (within 2 months). I've done this once before, many years ago, and got creamed by the guesser (who got my weight almost perfectly) but I decided to put my money in for the guesser to guess my age. I look pretty young for 24, and I was curious what he would say. His answer...

Fifteen.

I got a stuffed dog.

I then proceeded to demolish a Skee ball machine and won a gigantic Pikachu, and Musetta won a whack-a-mole tournament which netted her a monkey. All in all, I think we came out on top!